Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
Editor’s Note: The following
is a Review favorite from
the archives. Former Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Desai
drew this account of Fitzgerald’s visit to Hanover from
Dartmouth Library’s Budd
Schulburg.
The story of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1939 trip to Dartmouth for Winter Carnival
is legendary, even if the best
known version has it simply
that the novelist got very
drunk in Hanover. Even this
condensed form has appeal:
the man of letters who does
not uphold the supposed
dignity of his profession is
both comic and tragic. Yet
an investigation of the Budd
Schulberg papers reveals a
tale that, when fleshed out,
gains still more gravity and
comic appeal.

It’s a yarn that Schulberg
‘36 related many times in
publications, at conferences,
and in fictional form in his
1951 novel The Disenchanted. Like any drinking story,
it seems to alter with each
telling to provide maximum entertainment, usually through emphasis but
occasionally in presentation
of facts.(Did Schulberg really take Fitzgerald to Psi
U or simply feint in that
direction?) But Schulberg,
the acclaimed novelist of
What Makes Sammy Run?
and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “On
the Waterfront,” tells it well
each time. What follows is
the ‘39 bender according to
Schulberg, which is drawn
from several accounts and
rendered using a combination of quotation and paraphrasing. His is the controlling view, since he stuck

by Fitzgerald more closely
than anyone else during
their brief excursion.
Schulberg was something
of a Hollywood prince,
the son of a movie mogul
who had known only Hollywood, Deerfield Academy, and Dartmouth by the
time he had reached his
twenty-fourth year. He had
graduated from Dartmouth
three years before and was
working for David O. Selznick, a family friend and
the legendary producer who
made “Gone with the Wind.”
This would have led to a
career in production, like
his father’s, but Schulberg
aspired to write. After extricating himself from Selznick, he received a call from
the producer Walter Wanger
‘15 who proposed making a
picture about Dartmouth’s
Winter Carnival.
“I always thought of Hol-

lywood like a principality
of its own,” Schulberg reelected years later, “It was
like a sort of a Luxembourg,
or something like that, or
Liechtenstein. And the people who ran it really had
that attitude. They weren’t
only running a studio, they
were running a whole little
world... They could cover up
murder... You could liter-ally have somebody killed,
and it wouldn’t be in the
papers.
“It was not something on
my own I would sit down
and be fascinated by, the
Winter Carnival movie,”
Schulberg recalled, “But it
was good money; it was 250
bucks a week, a lot of money—there’s no denying it. I’d
been married young. Also it
was about my own place, my
own college.”

> FEATURES PAGE 10

Erik R. Jones
Contributor

Within a day of its posting, the opinion piece titled “You’re Not Tripping”
in The Dartmouth had ignited a campus-wide uproar. In this op-ed, Ryan
Spector ‘19 detailed his
disappointment with 2018
First-Year Trips directorate selection process.
Each year, approximately
nineteen upperclassmen
applicants are selected for
the directorate in order to
help facilitate Trips, Dartmouth’s annual summer
excursions for incoming
freshmen. This year, out of
forty-four total applicants,
fifteen women were chosen, along with four men.
After being rejected from
the directorate himself,
Spector accused the directors in charge of the selection process of having an

“obsession with diversity”
that “verges on the inane,”
in light of the extremely
female heavy directorate.
The director of Trips, Lucia Pierson ‘18, along with
Dalia Rodriguez-Caspeta
‘18, the assistant director,
emphasized in their original announcement that
the 80% female 2018 Trips
directorate was selected
“purely based on merit”.
Spector railed against this
notion, calling it “nothing
but an exercise in mental
gymnastics”. He argued
that their decision to only
accept four male students
indicated an “extreme application of a diversity
policy” and claimed that
the members of the new
directorate would not adequately represent the Dartmouth student body.

> FEATURES PAGE 6

A VOTE OF NO
CONFIDENCE

THE MARDI GRAS
OF THE NORTH

AN ENOCH POWELL
RETROSPECTIVE

Editor-in-Chief Jack Mourouzis calls for a vote of no
confidence against President Hanlon

The Review looks at the
historical revelry associated with the Winter
Carnival weekend

The Review looks back at
the life and accomplishments of the legendary
British politician

> EDITORIAL PAGE 3

> FEATURES PAGE 9

> FEATURES PAGE 8

2 Wednesday – February 7, 2018

The Dartmouth Review

STUDENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS

WRITE

WORK

For thirty-five years, The Dartmouth Review has been
the College’s only independent newspaper and the only
student opinion journal that matters. It is the oldest and
most renowned campus commentary publication in the
nation and spawned a national movement at the likes of
Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and countless others. Our
staff members and alumni have won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and have been published in the
Boston Globe, New York Times, National Review, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, Village Voice, New Criterion, and many others.
The Review aims to provide a voice for any student who enjoys challenging brittle and orthodox thinking. We stand for
free speech, student rights, and the liberating arts. Whatever
your political leanings, we invite you to come steep yourself
in campus culture and politics, Dartmouth lore, keen witticisms, and the fun that comes with writing for an audience
of thousands. We’re looking for writers, photographers, cartoonists, aspiring business managers, graphic designers, web
maestros, and anyone else who wants to learn from Dartmouth’s unofficial school of journalism.

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space

“Because every student deserves a safe space”

– Inge-Lise Ameer, Former Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Meetings held Mondays at 6:30 PM at our offices at 32 S. Main Street
(next to Lou’s in the lower level office space)

INSIDE THE ISSUE

PERHAPS YOU SHOULD COME
TO ONE OF OUR MEETINGS
BEFORE MAKING LUDICROUS
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT US.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Comes to Hanover...............................Page 1
“You’re Not Tripping:” In Solidarity with Spector..........Page 1
Editorial: A Vote of No Confidence...................................Page 3
The Week in Review...............................................................Page 4
The Problems of Solidarity and Condemnation..............Page 7
In Memoriam: Enoch Powell...............................................Page 8
The Mardi Gras of the North...............................................Page 9

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Special thanks to William F. Buckley, Jr.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I went to Princeton.”
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“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to takerank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows
neither victory nor defeat.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

EDITORIAL

A Vote of No
Confidence
As Daniel Webster stated in the legendin the fall of 2015 and the controversy surary 1819 Supreme Court case of Dartmouth
rounding the defacement of a National PoCollege vs. Wentworth, “It is, sir, as I have
lice Week board in the Collis Center in the
said, a small college. And yet there are those spring of 2016. Both incidents drew nationwho love it!” Since the College’s early days,
al attention, resulting in condemnation of
Webster’s words have defined the instituthe offending forces from all sides – except
tion, resulting in its status as one of the most
from the College’s administration. President
tight-knit, effective, and reputable intuitions Hanlon’s emails – which have always been,
of higher learning in the entire world. Howand continue to be, weak – neither mitigatever, nearly 250 years later, President Haned tensions nor heightened them. As such,
lon stands to flout Webster’s words and tensions between the student body have only
change the very core of the College for the
increased since. The controversy over former
worse. I have long held that Dartmouth is a professor Aimee Bahng’s tenure denial only
failing institution. However, with the deciserved to cause even more dissatisfaction.
sion to expand the size of the College and
My junior year displayed this trend
destroy its central mission of intieven further. Following the election
mate undergraduate education,
of President Trump in November
Dartmouth will no longer be a
of 2016, the administration’s refailing institution; it will be a
sponse was both problematic
failed institution. And that is
and lackluster – while offering
why I wholeheartedly believe
emotional support to students
that the faculty of Dartmouth
who were upset at Donald
College should launch a vote
Trump’s victory, Hanlon’s adof no confidence against Presministration also failed to give
ident Philip J. Hanlon.
in to the demands of leftist
President Hanlon’s failcalls for Dartmouth to beures began long before I macome a sanctuary campus.
triculated at the College, but
Though in this case, his
the effects are still felt. He set
response has been for
the tone for his administrathe better, it still reveals
tion – the tone being general
a troubling fact: President
Jack F. Mourouzis
apathy towards undergraduHanlon does not, has not,
ates – as early as the Parkhurst Freedom Budand never will care for the undergraduate
get protests, where he neither gave in to the students of the College. In the spring of 2017,
demands of the protestors, nor condemned
he once again proved his inept nature with
their misdeeds. His actions proved to be very the controversial appointment of Professor
telling for the future of his administration and N. Bruce Duthu for the post of Dean of the
the shape of things to come.
Faculty. Duthu, who was widely seen as unIn my three and a half years at the Colqualified for the job, ultimately declined his
lege, President Hanlon’s policies have done
nomination, constituting yet another loss for
nothing to effect any substantial change; the Hanlon administration.
change which has occurred has, predomiNow, Hanlon’s plans to destroy College
nantly, been negative. The majority of my Park in favor of new dorms, in addition to
freshman year, the prevailing topic of the his plans to expand the size of the student
times was the Greek system and the loombody, threaten to destroy the core of the ining Moving Dartmouth Forward initiative. stitution he has so ineptly led since 2013.
While it seems like ancient history today, in
These ideas are wildly unpopular and bene2014, it was the talk of the town; in the fall of
fit absolutely no one. Why, then, would these
my freshman year, it seemed like the Greek
changes possibly be enacted? If there is an
system was all but gone. When the initiative answer, it might benefit the administration
made its recommendations in the winter of
to spread the message. Or, perhaps, there
2015 – based off spotty data and skewed persimply is no answer, and the reason is simply
spectives – the effects were ultimately not so because President Hanlon is a poor leader.
significant. The Greek system still survives, In his four and a half years as a member of
though in a state far inferior to what it used
the Wheelock Succession, President Hanto be. Alas, we would never know; but anylon has accomplished nothing, and is now
one would tell you that nobody rages anypoised to destroy the College we all know
more. And reports suggest that the sons and and love. At the same time, he has proved
daughters of Dartmouth – freshman, sophohimself ineffective, incompetent, and inept;
more, junior, and senior – still consume hard he is simply unfit to continue serving as the
alcohol on a regular basis.
President of Dartmouth College. It is time
The major events of my sophomore year for the damage to end. It is time for a vote of
included the now-infamous library protests
no confidence.

4 Wednesday – February 7, 2018

The Dartmouth Review

WEEK IN REVIEW
WHAT’S UP WITH WHITE
PEOPLE?
With an audience seemingly large enough to warrant multiple fire safety violations, Professor Matt
Wray commenced his presentation: “What’s Up with
White People: A Field Guide for the Perplexed,” on
February 2nd. This is not the first time Wray, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Temple University
in Philadelphia, PA, has presented his work on the
study of “whiteness.” Wray discussed two main concepts that have apparently become the “core problem in the post-civil rights era.” In his view, white
privilege and colorblindness affect how “being white
means different things to different white people.”
Wray went even further, to what he calls his contribution to the field of the study of “whiteness” by
shifting the factors mentioned above into political
orientation and boundary orientation (how white
people think about race). These two variables allow
the formation of 4 different types of white people.
While it is interesting that Wray realizes that socio-economic factors influence what it means to be
‘white,’ his theory on the four types of white people attracts well-warranted criticism. The four types
are colorblind liberals (“identifiers”), colorblind
conservatives (“deniers”), race-conscious liberals
(“resisters”), and race-conscious conservatives (“resenters”). In a derogatory fashion, both types under
conservative for political orientation are apparently
antagonistic to progressive racial policies. As if ridiculously parodying his own ideology, he described
the ‘icon’ of colorblind conservatives as ‘neocons’
and the icon of race-conscious conservatives as ‘rednecks.’ Unsurprisingly, his 2x2 chart categorizing
white people ignores the diversity of thought and
opinion among both liberals and conservatives in
the United States. Wray doubled down on his description of the race-conscious conservatives and
showed a picture of Richard Spencer as a key figure
in the supposed movement. The fact that Spencer is
not taken seriously, except by a very small yet vocal
minority, was not mentioned.
Wray brought up an interesting observation on
colorblind liberals, the so-called identifiers. He
mentions how supposed ‘liberals’ try to act sympathetic to racial minorities but end up causing more
harm than good. However, Wray completely missed
the point when he declared the race-conscious lib-

erals, the so-called resisters, as the model for future
progress. He claimed that most ‘resisters’ voted for
Bernie Sanders in the primaries, even as Sanders
openly disregarded the plight of poor white people through comments like “when you’re white, you
don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto.”
Wray also made the bold and objectionable claim
that “if you’re a white person, your cultural bank account is empty,” which received a positive reception
from the audience. Nearly every group regardless of
their identity has historically contributed to American culture. To say that whites have no culture is
simply ignorant and bordering on racist. Wray asked
a lot of interesting questions on race in America
but ended up answering none. He contributed more
to the dumpster fire that is identity politics, which
continues to devolve into unintentional self-parody.
We at The Review highly doubt that presentations titled “What’s Up with Black People,” “What’s Up with
Asian People,” and “What’s Up with Hispanic People,” would receive similar acclaim. In fact, we are
inclined to believe those presentations would be met
with vitriolic outrage from many groups on campus.

COLLEGE RELEASES
APPLICATION NUMBERS FOR
CLASS OF 2022
The College recently announced its application
numbers to the Class of 2022, as a total of 22,005 applications were received this year. With an increase
in applications by 1,971, or 9.8 percent, the school’s
acceptance rate is likely to see a significant dip, as it
may even enter the single digits. The increase in applicant pool, along with last year’s record yield rate
which produced the largest class in Dartmouth history, will likely be significant factors in this year’s
admission cycle.
With much rhetoric and discussion relating to
President Hanlon’s plan to increase the size of the
student body size, all eyes are on the Class of 2022.
The new freshmen will provide insight into whether the College will continue to move towards larger
classes, which may provide further problems with
the seemingly endless housing crisis and class overpopulation.
It is also worth noting that the College was very
aggressive this year in recruiting a large number of
applicants who are would be first generation college
students and students from low income backgrounds

through programs such as QuestBridge. The College
has also made great efforts to increase visibility and
publicity for undergraduates, pointing out the College’s dedication to undergraduates, mission to recruit academics who love to teach, and the unique
research opportunities afforded to undergraduates.
As the infamous “Ivy Day” comes closer, many
questions surround what the Class of 2022 will look
like. Statistics categorizing the class members will
likely follow pretty soon, but as discussions about
the future of the College persist, this admissions
cycle is shaping up to be very interesting in terms
of the direction of Dartmouth. While some may argue that it’s important for the College to maintain
its identity as the small liberal arts Ivy, one thing
remains certain, the Class of 2022 will in many ways
be a telltale sign of the direction in which the College is headed.

“IN SOLIDARITY” WITH
RYAN SPECTOR AND THE
DARTMOUTH
On behalf of the more conservative members of
the Dartmouth community, we would like to offer
our support to both Ryan Spector and The Dartmouth in light of the recent publication of the op-ed
entitled “You’re Not Tripping.”
While Spector’s column is not without flaws, we
would like to condemn the numerous personal attacks he has endured, in addition to the dangerous
rhetoric coming from many of the condemning organizations. While it is difficult to substantiate that
the decisions regarding Trips executives were based
on identity rather than merit, the issues he raises in
his article are important, and it is important that an
open discussion of the topic is held. Spector’s closing statement – that trips is “no longer for trippees…
It is for ideology, no matter how cruel the implications” – indeed paints a picture of a troubling, yet
very real state of affairs.
Furthermore, we find the notion that Spector’s
column communicates any type of hate, racism, bigotry, or “toxic masculinity” to be wholly ridiculous.
His words are not an attack on any population or
any individual; they are simply raising awareness of
a perceived problem. The many emails proclaiming
solidarity for “victims” of his article have a warped
perception of his ideas; nowhere does he convey the
notion that “there is nothing meritable about a room

Alexander Rauda
full of women, WOC, or POC,” or that his article
is an “attack on people of color, queer folk, gender
non-conforming people, first generation, low-income students or women.” These perceptions are
nothing but absurd. As such, any personal attacks
directed back upon him – or anyone coming to his
defense – are reprehensible.
Finally, and most importantly, we wholly support
the decision of The Dartmouth to publish this article
in the first place. It is an important step in assuring
that all ideas, unpopular or popular, conservative or
liberal, right or left, are heard on a campus that is
overwhelmingly liberal and that often ignores unpopular, conservative, or right-leaning notions. We
always stand for open discourse, and we condemn all
those who seek its destruction.

5

Vamsi Gadde
Jake G. Philhower

CARTOON

“IN SOLIDARITY” WITH
RYAN SPECTOR AND THE
DARTMOUTH
In response to the riots at Berkeley due to the guest
speakers Milo Yiannopolous and Ann Coulter, the
College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation contacted the Department of Justice. Appalled
at the response to his potential arrival, these groups
determined that the college had mistreated conservative speakers. In alignment with this claim, they
say that the College has infringed upon their First
Amendment right to freedom of speech. They reference UC Berkeley’s “High-Profile Speaker Policy” as
the reason administrators could influence curfews,
security costs and unwanted venues for those conservative speakers who arrive on campus.
With this policy in mind, that College Republicans and YAF claim that they’re being faced with a
double standard between Berkeley’s response to conservative and liberal speakers. YAF spokesperson
said the following on the subject: “The school’s policy to bring in conservative speakers and any other
event that’s conservative is much harder than it is
for liberal students. The university was selectively
enforcing these policies that made it much harder
for conservatives to bring in speakers and express
their ideas.”
Campus spokesperson Roqua Montezhad said in
response, “The allegations made by the plaintiffs in
this lawsuit are unfounded. Berkeley does not discriminate against speakers invited by student organizations based upon viewpoint.”
The case had already been dismissed in October
2017 but has been re-filed since. And on January 25,
the Department of Justice has backed them in their
suit. Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said
in a statement, “This Department of Justice will not
stand by idly while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights,” taking a strong stand
against UC Berkeley in this case. So the DOJ has
filed a Statement of Interest into a suit of discriminatory practices that curb free speech. If the lawsuit
is successful, Brand hopes that this will prevent the
college from continuing to discriminate against conservative speakers on campus.

“So from now on, it looks like every class will have as many students as its year. It is literally a
class of 2022.”

Immediately after the article
was posted, the backlash began
in the comments section. One
student called the op-ed a “whiny
post-rejection [expression] of
frustration”, and many offered up
faux sympathy for him as a “white
cis male” from Illinois. Some of
the comments respectfully challenged his arguments, but most
of them accused him of sexist and
even racist undertones, emphasizing his status as a privileged
white male.
One day after the op-ed was
posted, Link Up, a women’s
student group, sent out a campus-wide email with the heading, “Statement in Solidarity”.
The email defended Pierson and
Rodriguez-Caspeta, and claimed
that Spector’s article “attacks
marginalized identities.” The
email also celebrated the high
percentage of female students in
the new directorate as “correcting [for] years of underrepresentation and marginalization”.
Throughout the weekend and
into the next week, over 30 campus organizations followed their

posted in the opinion section.
An email from Divest Dartmouth
accused The D of “negligence,”
stating that allowing Spector and
others like him to express their
opinions “endanger[s] the safety and wellbeing of marginalized students” and “only further
perpetuates the culture of toxic,
male, white supremacy.” About
nine other student groups echoed
these sentiments, either calling
on The Dartmouth to publicly
apologize for posting the op-ed,
or to remove it from the website
entirely.
On Monday, a campus email
from the Stonefence Review, a
Dartmouth literary magazine,
took a more personal turn. The
letter first criticized Spector and
called for The Dartmouth to rescind the op-ed, but then went
on to publicly name the fraternity of which Spector is a member,
demanding that the fraternity
itself apologize for the “act of
violence” that Spector committed. In bold font, the letter then
calls on the fraternity to use their
“place of power” with respect
to Spector’s social life to “take
a stand,” implying that the fra-

students’ literal safety is at risk.
This not only weakens their credibility in calling out injustice, but
also trivializes real instances of
gender-based violence which are
still a widespread global problem. These emails sent to the
Dartmouth student body made
Spector’s op-ed into something
that it was not. Their unwarranted
accusations have now irreparably
damaged a student’s image.
In his opinion piece, Spector
criticized a diversity policy in the
Trips application process that he
thinks disadvantages males. Even
though Spector makes little effort to conceal his exasperation,
he nonetheless offers support
for his claim. The original post
about the new Trips directorate,
also in The D, stated that they
“consciously considered identity
representations” in the selection
process, and Spector was confused why they didn’t make an
effort to admit more than four
men. He was then alarmed when
the Directorate’s original statement was edited to remove that
line, that merit was the only factor guiding their decision process. Perhaps the female candi-

talking about more, regardless
of which direction the racial/
gender disparity appears. In this
case, the overwhelming superiority of the female Trips applicants
outweighed the diversity benefits that would come with a more
gender-balanced
membership.
Or, maybe Pierson and Rodriguez-Caspeta should have considered the benefits of having a
slightly more balanced gender ratio, but they didn’t as it happened
to be males that were underrepresented. Spector described an ideology that he doesn’t find consistent, suggesting that people have
started to equate diversity with
low male representation. Part of
this, of course, reflects the recent
changes in society (the past several decades) that have enabled
more equal female representation
in various areas of life. The movement to expand female membership in colleges and in various
male-dominated professions has
been great, but we cannot do so at
the expense of our men, and their
ability to have their voices heard.
Disagreement with Spector’s
article is allowed, but attacking
his character so publicly with

fying people’s arguments to use
as material in hit pieces, and stop
intimidating people from voicing
their opinions. Making sure people are too scared to speak out is a
surefire way to never change their
minds. And having that mentality
does not foster the inclusive environment that we claim to have
here at Dartmouth. We are in college, and we should be not only
allowed, but encouraged, to make
mistakes. We cannot truly learn
if we have to fear that our name
will be associated with words like
“racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,”
and “white supremacy,” if we slip
up once or challenge the wrong
person.
The sentiments expressed in
these emails are not new, but
the sheer volume of the emails
denouncing Spector with all of
these labels has done noticeable
damage to the social climate at
Dartmouth. Just a month ago, the
Foundation for Individual Rights
in Education (FIRE) demoted
Dartmouth from a “yellow light”
to a “red light” free speech rating
(it 2015 it dropped from “green”
to “yellow”). Although it wasn’t
the Dartmouth administration

ternity should take some sort of
disciplinary action against him.
This email, along with many of
the others, has gone far beyond
a mere expression of empathy
with the Trips directors, and
now seems more concerned with
smearing the author’s reputation.
The trend of the campus-wide
emails sent throughout the weekend has taken us farther and farther away from the actual op-ed
written by Spector, and has taken us closer to a full-blown libel
campaign. Spector has now been
slandered in front of the entire
student body with unfounded
accusations of violence, white
supremacy, racism, sexism, and
homophobia.
Ryan Spector’s opinion article
in The Dartmouth was inflammatory and written from a bitterness
towards the board. His status as a
white man, however, does not, by
any means, warrant accusations
of violence and hate speech. Just
because Spector, a white man,
criticized certain decisions made
by Pierson and Rodriguez-Caspeta, two women, does not make
his criticism inherently sexist. The
writers of these “solidarity” letters
pay more attention to the identities of the people being criticized
than the reality of the situation.
Using language like “violence,”
“attack,” and “safety” conflates
Spector’s bitter tone and message
with real assault — implying that

dates were simply more qualified
for these roles, but this does not
make the gender disparity any
less remarkable. Having only
four out of nineteen members
the directorate would represent
the same lack of diversity that
having just four out of nineteen
females would. It is not sexist to
ask whether or not the director
and assistant director would have
made the same decision had the
roles been reversed, if the male
applicant pool was more qualified than the female pool. Maybe they made the right choices,
and maybe they didn’t, but we
should be allowed to have a nuanced discussion as to whether
the difference in merit justified
the gender disparity. Many of the
facts of the application process,
like the gender breakdown of applicants, have not been released
to the campus, and they probably
won’t. But that doesn’t mean we
can’t talk about the competing
factors that guided the selection
process and discuss the values
that we think should guide any
application selection process for
student leadership roles at Dartmouth.
Almost all students at Dartmouth recognize the value both
of diversity and of having qualified leaders on campus. Balancing
these factors when they conflict
with each other is an important
conversation that we should be

accusations of racism and sexism should not be. We need to
carefully consider the arguments
made by Spector, but we also
need to carefully consider the
social structures in place here at
Dartmouth that allowed this level of unjustified backlash to take
place on such a public, and personal level. When the skin-tone
and gender of the author is being
used as material against him more
so than his actual arguments, we
have a problem. We need to think
about the way that the Trips director and assistant director have
been affected by Spector’s op-ed,
but we also need to think about
the way this male student is being
affected by countless false claims
of violence and bigotry in these
emails. We can’t view empathy
as something that only needs to
be applied to those lower than
us on the privilege hierarchy. We
cannot condone the unrestricted
bashing of a person’s character
on one opinion he/she expressed.
We need to consider the medium
we are using to get our message
across, what our message is, and
what the future implications of
our actions will be.
These emails not only tainted a
man’s image with so many vicious
and untrue accusations, but they
also sent a clear message to the
rest of campus of what the penalty is for expressing an unpopular
view. We need to stop oversimpli-

involved here, the social and personal implications of these emails
are relevant to this downward
trend. We have already seen some
positive reactions in defense of
the free exchange of ideas, notably
from The Dartmouth and a letter
from Dartmouth Open Campus
Coalition (DOCC). Despite all of
the demands for the op-ed to be
removed, The D stuck with their
principles and kept it online, and
restated their commitment to allowing different viewpoints. And
the DOCC sent out a letter to
campus denouncing the “calls to
silence voices” and supporting the
“rights of all arguments to be expressed openly”. But these statements of support for free speech,
including a letter from two professors posted in The D, are a
rarity. If Dartmouth is going to
be a place where open dialogue is
encouraged, we need to drop the
labels and welcome new ideas and
opinions into our lives. We need
to consciously work to avoid snap
judgements and character smears.
If we want to be able to have productive conversations about important issues, we all need to be
respectful enough to hear everyone out, regardless of their gender, race, and identity. We need
to reevaluate the current state of
discourse at Dartmouth and work
to combat efforts to silence certain viewpoints. We need to find
better ways to disagree.

Ryan Spector’s opinion article in The Dartmouth was inflammatory and written from a bitterness towards the
board. His status as a white man, however, does not, by any means, warrant accusations of violence and hate
speech. Just because Spector, a white man, criticized certain decisions made by Pierson and Rodriguez-Caspeta,
two women, does not make his criticism inherently sexist.

lead and sent out their own letters of “solidarity” with the Trips
director and assistant director,
further denouncing Spector’s
op-ed as an “attack” on women
and women of color. The wash of
emails came from a wide range
of student groups, including the
Committee on Sexual Assault,
several a capella groups, senior
societies, sororities, one fraternity, and a variety of other minority and women’s groups. The
emails varied in the severity of
their accusations, but the allegations against Spector as a violent
perpetrator of racism and sexism were common throughout.
In one email, the senior society
by the name of Phoenix called
Spector’s article “blatantly based
in patriarchal and white supremacist narratives” and labeled it an
“attack” on marginalized people.
The Asian American Students
Association stated in their email
that the article “invisibilizes people of color, women and trans
folk, [and] queer women of color,” and mocked the op-ed as an
example of “white male tears.”
Many of these emails not only
targeted Spector, but also denounced The Dartmouth’s decision to publish the article in the
first place, even though it was
Mr. Jones is a sophomore at the
College and a contributor to The
Dartmouth Review.

The Dartmouth Review

Wednesday – February 7, 2018

7

FEATURES

The Problems of Solidarity
Scotch M. Cara

Contributor

In the wake of an article
published in The Dartmouth
by Ryan Spector ’19 on February 2, 2018 titled “You’re
Not Tripping,” many organizations have come out with
letters and statements of solidarity that condemn Spector and The Dartmouth and
support the DOC’s Freshman
Trips Directorate. In his article, Spector claims that the
Trips Directors used affirmative action style policies
to determine the members of
the Trips Directorate and, as
a result of those policies, that
only 4 out of the 19 members
of the Directorate are men.
Spector’s position is that he
was denied a position on the
Directorate not on the basis
of merit, but rather because
of his gender. Throughout
the article, Spector makes
provocative comments such
as “Credentials matter not,
but skin tone, womanhood
and claims of marginalized
status do,” and “Perhaps female applicants simply wrote
superior applications — but
no self-respecting person
could believe that one gender, on principle, is four
times more likely to write a

inundate the campus listserv
with letters, the statements
of solidarity became less
about solidarity and more
about calls to action. The
Inter-Community
Council
was the first organization to
condemn The Dartmouth. In
expressing their “disappointment,” they called for “The
Dartmouth to retract the article and issue an apology to
those whom the article has
harmed” and stated that any
response piece would “only

mouth College— even the
unpopular ones. Abstracting from the current discussion of Spector’s article for
a moment, it is important to
acknowledge that a lack of
strength in numbers has no
bearing on the validity of an
argument. More importantly, it has no bearing on the
right of the minority views
to speak up on behalf of the
side of an argument that they
personally believe in.
To address the article spe-

While it is easy to condemn words that
you disagree with, it is significantly
harder to do what the editors at The
Dartmouth chose to do and retain their
journalistic integrity.
validate the author and imply
that his opinions are credible and worthy of debate.”
Phoenix—a secret society—
condemned The Dartmouth’s
actions as a “failure to uphold its own editorial policy
of disregarding hate speech.”
Epsilon Kappa Theta—a local sorority— too declared
The Dartmouth as “complicit in the [article’s] reckless
inflammatory rhetoric.” The
Rockapellas—an all-female
acapella group— and the
Asian-American Students for

cifically— Spector’s article
lacks data and, at points, a
coherent argument. However, it’s an opinion editorial
about his personal experience. While a better forum
for this piece may have been
Spector’s
personal
journal, The Dartmouth has no
ground to deny publishing
something on the basis of
it being emotional. In publishing editorials, The Dartmouth claims no responsibility for the arguments that its
contributors make. They only

letter writers allow Spector
to shirk responsibility for
his comments— the opposite
of what a reasonable person
standing in thoughtful solidarity would want to do.
Second, the issue of group
agency is an important one
to consider in situations
like this. Group agency is
the term used to discuss the
problems associated with attributing a single, coherent
sense of agency and responsibility to a community of
different individuals acting
as a group. It asks questions
about the extent to which
individual members are responsible for decisions that
the group makes on their
behalf. It attempts to shed
light on how, descriptively,
groups act to represent their
membership while simultaneously questioning whether
groups ought to even have
the right to this form of representation. In this situation,
the group agency dilemma at
hand is whether these campus organizations have the
right to exploit the tyranny
of the majority and speak on
behalf of its members who
may have personal views that
disagree with portions of the
content of these letters. Do
these organizations have the

of solidarity, the executive
members of the organization
write the letter for pragmatic reasons associated with
the benefits of clear leadership structures. However,
there is something unsettling about only the leaders
of the organization speaking
on behalf of its membership
when the organization itself
is not devoted to the specific cause on which the leaders
are speaking on. In regard to
The Dartmouth— the college
newspaper is one of the largest organizations on campus,
and most definitely has members who disagree with Spector’s article. To condemn the
paper in its entirety is unfair
to those members.
The solution to both the
group agency dilemma and
the problem of free speech in
this situation is clear. Instead
of signing letters as only the
organization, the members of
each organization who support the letter ought to put
their name on it. This would
offer an incentive for members of the organization to
hold an open forum for discourse that more fully represents the views of all of its
membership, rather than just
those in a position of power.
If at least a supermajority of

Do these organizations have the right to ignore the minority of voices in their organization who may
disagree with the published letters? It’s not an easy question to answer.
winning application than the
other.” Regardless of one’s
personal opinions on the validity and desirability or lack
thereof of diversity policies,
these statements ooze of bitterness and bias. Accordingly, the letters of solidarity
contain statements condemning Spector’s language.
Link Up—an organization on campus that helps
to connect Dartmouth women on campus—was the first
organization to send out a
message of solidarity, declaring that Spector “attacks
marginalized identities and
questions the idea that marginalized people in positions
of power could deserve those
positions based on merit.” Dartmouth Spectra—an
organization
supporting
LGBTQ+ members on campus— stated that the “op-ed
endangers both the safety
and the future job prospects
of the women it bashes.” The
Student and Presidential
Committee on Sexual Assault
reiterated that they were
“confident that each member
of the First-Year Trips directorate is objectively qualified
for their role.” However, as
organizations continued to
Ms. Cara is a student at the College
and a fan of Scottish single malts.

Action both called for The
Dartmouth to rescind at least
portions of the article and issue apologies.
There are two main issues
at hand with these letters
of solidarity. First and foremost—calls of action against
The Dartmouth and condemnations of its decisions to
support freedom of speech
are problematic and, more
directly relevant to this situation, not statements made in
solidarity of the Trips Directorate. Second, these broad
statements of solidarity erase
the nuanced voices of members of these organizations.
First, in condemning The
Dartmouth for being “complicit” in this situation by
their choice to publish an
opinion piece and support
free expression, these organizations put themselves in a
difficult situation. While it is
easy to condemn words that
you disagree with, it is significantly harder to do what
the editors at The Dartmouth
chose to do and retain their
journalistic integrity. The
newspaper is not the Dartmouth Outing Club. It is not
the Trips Directorate. It is
not a club voicing concerns
about diversity. Its primary
purpose is to represent the
views, opinions, and happenings of the members of Dart-

preserve the right of students
in the Dartmouth community
to have their voices heard. By
condemning The Dartmouth
for performing its editorial
duty, these on campus organizations advocate for a system that preferences only the
majority viewpoint— a dangerous precedent that denies
freedom in lieu of supporting the voice of the strongest. While I broadly agree
with the letter writers’ support of the Trips Directors
and believe strongly that the

right to ignore the minority
of voices in their organization who may disagree with
the published letters? It’s not
an easy question to answer.
In some regards, by consenting to be a part of an
organization, the individual consents to being in part
publicly represented by that
organization. Another answer to this question might
be that while the individual
consents to membership, he
or she does not consent to
having his or her agency tak-

The solution to both the group agency
dilemma and the problem of free speech
in this situation is clear. Instead of
signing letters as only the organization,
the members of each organization who
support the letter ought to put their
name on it.
women chose the most qualified people for the job (after
all, Trips are sacred at Dartmouth and nobody who is
unqualified applies to organize them), it is an utter mistake to blame The Dartmouth
for this debacle as Spector
is unaffiliated with the organization. Spector’s absurd
commentary and blatant
whining is not that of The
Dartmouth’s. By scapegoating The Dartmouth, these

en away by the organization.
For clubs and organizations
that value diversity and individuality, the latter opinion
may be preferable. As these
are largely the types of organizations that have released
letters of solidarity, there is
a worry about whether the
loudest voices are over representing the opinions of the
group at the expense of denying the quieter ones their
voices. In most cases of letters

members must sign a letter
for it to be sent out, then letter-writers have an incentive
to make their words representative of the organization.
Those in the minority retain
the power to abstain from the
specific elements of the letter
they disagree with, maintaining their status as individual
with agency inside of the organization. Procedurally and
structurally, all individuals
were given an incentive and
a structure to maintain and
voice their discrete opinions.
If you aren’t willing to
claim your words, then you
aren’t standing in solidarity.
Freedom of speech requires
robust protection to allow
for people to maintain their
individuality and feel comfortable using their voices in
the way they wish. There will
always be elements of speech
that individuals condemn
and disagree with. Silencing
voices does not make them
go away— it only breeds animosity and denies crucial
discourse. Neither “You’re
Not Tripping” nor the letters of solidarity are in any
way special instances of dialogue-gone-wrong. But it
is one that we can all learn
from to both improve a respect of free speech and our
desire to ardently recognize
and defend it.

Wednesday – february 7, 2018

The Dartmouth Review

8

FEATURES

In Memoriam: Enoch Powell

ENOCH POWELL in 1987 by M. Allan Warren

Daniel M. Bring
Managing Editor

This Thursday, February 8th,
2018, will mark the twentieth
anniversary of the death of
Enoch Powell, a prominent
British statesman, scholar, and
poet. He passed away in 1998
at the age of 85, after a long
and storied career in politics,
military service, and academia.
His later years were embroiled
in controversy as he emerged
as one of the most strident antiimmigration politicians of his
day. To this day, he remains
a deeply divisive figure, seen
by some as the ideological
forefather of the contemporary
Brexit movement and as virulent
racist by others. Nevertheless,
the significance of his life and
ideas to today’s debates in the
United Kingdom, America, and
Europe is unquestionable.
By all accounts of his early life,
the young Powell demonstrated
rare academic and intellectual
prowess. He was born the only
child of a middle-class family in
Birmingham, England in 1912,
and was an avid reader from a
very early age. He studied the
Classics in secondary school and
earned a place at Trinity College,
Cambridge. He excelled in his
further study of Latin and Greek
at Cambridge and simultaneously
took a course in Urdu at another
university. Powell had aspired
from an early age to serve as
the Viceroy of British India, and
correspondingly believed that
he required a mastery of Indian
languages to do so.
Powell
graduated
from
Mr. Bring is a freshman at the
College and managing editor of
The Dartmouth Review.

university with a double first,
which for those unfamiliar
with the Cambridge system of
degree classification is quite a
rare achievement. He stayed
at Trinity College as a fellow
for some time but was soon
appointed Professor of Greek
at the University of Sydney. He
was 25 at the time, narrowly
missing his target of 24, the
age at which his hero Friedrich
Nietzsche became a professor.
While teaching in Australia in
the late 1930s, he was astonished
by the inaction of the British
government
towards
the
expansionism of Nazi Germany.
When the Second World War
broke out in September 1939, he
immediately returned home to
enlist in the armed services.
Powell’s ascent through the
ranks of the British military
during over the course of the war
was nothing short of meteoric.
He was one of two soldiers in
the whole of the war to rise from
private to brigadier. Though to
his great disappointment, he
never saw combat, he served
the British war effort in several
capacities, primarily in military
intelligence. As distinguished
as his military service was,
his record is not without its
blemishes. He was once arrested
as a suspected German spy for
singing the Nazi anthem “HorstWessel-Lied.” Powell was not
particularly well-liked by his
fellow officers; the famed British
commando Orde Wingate once
threatened to “beat [Powell’s]
brains in.”
Still, Powell had a marked
positive impact on Allied
military intelligence by the end
of the war. He was one of the
youngest brigadiers in the British
service and was offered several

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
critical postwar offices, which he
declined. Shortly after the end
of his military career, he entered
politics after the imminence
of
Indian
independence
made his dream of becoming
Viceroy of India impossible.
He was elected to the House of
Commons as a Conservative
Member of Parliament (MP)
for Wolverhampton South West
in the 1950 United Kingdom
general election. He would
serve this constituency as a
Conservative until 1974.
Powell entered the Prime
Minister’s cabinet as Minister
of Health in 1960 and served in
this capacity until 1963. Before
that, he had served dutifully
as Junior Housing Minister
and Financial Secretary to the
Treasury. Major policy decisions
did not define his time as
Minister of Health. He stood
in the first Conservative Party
leadership election in 1965 but
came in third place, with future
Prime Minister Edward Heath
emerging victorious. Powell
was appointed by Heath to be
Shadow Secretary of State for
Defense, as the Conservatives
were opposition at this time.
It would not be long, however,
before Powell rose to lasting
national prominence.
Powell’s life and legacy came
to be defined by his remarks at a
Conservative Party gathering in
Birmingham on April 20th, 1968.
His speech, known after that as
the “Rivers of Blood speech,”
strongly
condemned
mass
immigration, especially from
the British Commonwealth.
He infamously proclaimed, “As
I look ahead, I am filled with
foreboding; like the Roman,
I seem to see the River Tiber
foaming with much blood.”

He was fiercely denounced by
figures from the British left
and right, as many of his fellow
leading Conservatives turned
against him. Though he had
only warned against the dangers
posed by the unchecked influx
of immigrants, his opponents
labeled him a racist. Some of
his Conservative allies stood
by him, and others thought it
would only worsen the matter to
dismiss Powell from his role in
the Shadow Cabinet. Regardless,
Heath sacked Powell as Shadow
Secretary of State for Defense
the day after his speech.
Powell’s dismissal and the
whole affair were massively
controversial. Opinion polling
done at the time revealed that
the majority of the British
population
supported
the
sentiments expressed in the
“Rivers of Blood” speech.
Powell developed a large public
following who rallied behind
him and protested against his
treatment by Heath and the
Conservative Party leadership. In
fact, many historians attribute the
surprising Conservative victory
in the 1970 general election to
Powell’s wild popularity. His
continued alienation from the
heart of the Conservative Party
politics after the 1970 election
troubled Powell. Just five days
before the February 1974 general
election, he publicly left the
Conservatives and resigned from
Parliament. The Conservatives
lost their majority and Heath’s
premiership was over.
Powell returned to Commons
just a few months later following
the October 1974 general
election. He was now an MP
of the Ulster Unionist Party,
representing the constituency of
South Down in Northern Ireland.
He supported the Labour Party
position in opposition to British
membership of the European
Economic Community (EEC),
the European Union’s immediate
predecessor, and campaigned for
the “No” vote in the 1975 EEC
membership referendum. The
“Yes” vote triumphed soundly
and the United Kingdom joined
the EEC despite Powell’s vocal
opposition. Powell’s last years in
politics were spent on the fringes
of public discourse, remaining
well known but not very well
regarded. He lost his seat in the
1987 general election, ending
his nearly 47-year tenure in
Parliament.
Out of office, Powell advocated
for British self-determination
and
independence
from
Europe,
mainly through
his support for Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher
had come out against European
integration in the last years of
her historic premiership and
earned the support of possibly
Britain’s most controversial
elder statesman. He was not
able to make a difference in the
1990 Conservative leadership
election by throwing his weight

behind Thatcher, who did not
win the contest outright and was
persuaded to resign. In 1992, he
was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
disease but remained active in
media and on the periphery
of politics in his final years.
He died in the hospital after a
series of falls complicated by his
condition.
Upon his death, then Prime
Minister Tony Blair of the
Labour Party said, “However
controversial his views, he was
one of the great figures of 20thcentury British politics, gifted
with a brilliant mind. However
much we disagreed with many of
his views, there was no doubting
the strength of his convictions or
their sincerity, or his tenacity in
pursuing them, regardless of his
political self-interest.”
In many ways, Enoch Powell
was a tragic figure. Though a
man of exceptional intellect
and a courageous spirit, he was
never able to attain real power
in the British government of his
day. Powell showed remarkable
prescience, accurately warning
the United Kingdom of the
danger of both European
integration and uncontrolled
immigration. He identified the
cultural shift occurring in the
United Kingdom due to the
migrant influx and the risks
it inherently poses to western
civilization. Due to his political
alienation, he was unable to
effect change to thwart the
threats he perceived to the
United Kingdom.
Powell was undoubtedly a
complicated and polarizing
figure. Popular interpretations
of his remarks and actions
have left him with a monstrous
legacy amongst many circles
in the United Kingdom to this
day. His political ideology
termed Powellism and rooted in
traditionalist conservatism and
libertarianism, lives on through
contemporary supporters. He
remains an oft-invoked figure of
racist villainy or defiant British
nationalism for the Left and
the Right respectively. It is true
that many of his words were
intended to be inflammatory,
dramatic, and provocative. He
was an agitator, spurring his
supporters and the general
British population to come out
against open door immigration.
However, the significance of
what he recognized and believed
cannot be overlooked and neither
can his years of committed
service to his constituents and
the United Kingdom as a whole.
At present, there is debate
over whether a commemorative
blue plaque for Enoch Powell
should or should not be installed
in Wolverhampton, his first
constituency. A wide majority
of the 14,000 respondents in an
Express & Star poll believe that
it should. When considering
Powell’s accomplishments and
foresight, it is not difficult to agree
with the majority opinion.

The Mardi Gras of the North
Emily Esfahani-Smith
Editor-in-Chief Emerita

Editor’s Note: The following story
was first published in The Review’s
2009 Winter Carnival Issue
Ninety-nine
years
ago,
Dartmouth Outing Club president
Fred Harris ‘11 devised a celebration
of winter sports, and invited
students from nearby colleges to
compete against the unbeatable
Dartmouth skiers. Officially named
Winter Carnival the following
year, the annual event evolved into
a legendary festival once dubbed
“the Mardi Gras of the North” by
National Geographic magazine.
Before long, Winter Carnival
became a favorite social weekend for
college students from other schools.
Today, the athletic dimension of
the Carnival remains, as well as the
shadow of campus parties.
In the Beginning
In 1910, skiing had not yet
emerged as a common form of
winter recreation. At Dartmouth,
Fred Harris ’11 and his friend A.T.
Cobb ’12 were among the few
students who participated in the
sport. Harris, as president of the
newly-formed Dartmouth Outing
Club, had an interest in promoting
skiing and winter sports, so he
undertook the organization of a
weekend devoted to those activities.
Harris wrote a letter to the Daily
Dartmouth outlining his proposal
to Dartmouth’s community. Shortly
thereafter, the newspaper published
an editorial calling for an event that
could act as the “culmination of
the season.” The weekend, read the
editorial, “would undoubtedly be
a feature of College activity which
from its novelty alone, if for no other
reason, would prove attractive. It is
not impossible that Dartmouth, in
initiating this movement, is setting
an example that will later find
Ms. Smith is a graduate of the class
of 2009 and Editor-in-Chief Emerita of The Dartmouth Review.

devotees among other New England
and northern colleges.”
The initial “field day” proved
to be a huge success, popular
with students, faculty, and local
townspeople. The events of the
first weekend included ski races,
ski jumping and snowshoe races.
Harris was a hands-down favorite
to sweep the events, but a knee
injury sustained during practice—
coupled with the distraction of a
fire in South Fayerweather Hall,
Harris’ dormitory—detracted from
his performance. Cobb emerged
victorious in every skiing event.
Encouraged by the popularity of
the winter sports weekend, students
began to lay out plans for the first
Winter Carnival in 1911. Such an
event, they reasoned, would benefit
from a female presence. Said the
Daily Dartmouth: “It is up to every
man with a purse or a heart, or with
a bit of enthusiasm for a good time
when it heaves in sight, to make
haste to procure that most necessary
item.” Dartmouth students heeded
the advice, and the first band of
Winter Carnival dates consisted
of fifty visitors from Smith, Mount
Holyoke, Wellesley, and other
nearby colleges. A 1939 Winter
Carnival article blasted, “Hanover
is set back on its collective heels as
girls, girls, girls pour in.”
The new social aspect of the
weekend, which consisted of a dance
and some theater, was welcomed by
all involved ,but athletics remained
paramount in the celebration. Once
again, Harris and Cobb dominated
the events, with the latter retaining
most of the crowns won the
previous year. The ski jump was the
biggest thrill for many spectators,
who had never seen or experienced
such a thing.
The Outing Club Ball, which
followed the sporting events,
signaled that the weekend was more
than a field day. For Dartmouth
students, Winter Carnival became
an instant tradition. “The Winter
Carnival of the Outing Club
won a deserved success, and will
undoubtedly remain a permanent
feature of Hanover winter life,” wrote

the Daily D , “This is how it should
be. Winter is the characteristic
Hanover season, winter weather is
Hanover’s finest weather, and winter
sports should be, and are coming to
be, the characteristic sports of the
Dartmouth undergraduate.”
The Legend Grows

Before long, the Dartmouth
Winter Carnival developed into the
most celebrated college weekend
in the nation. In 1919, National
Geographic devoted a feature
article to the “Mardi Gras of the
North.” The number of activities
increased, as did the number of
visitors to Hanover. Dances held by
Dartmouth fraternities became a
highlight of the weekend—which,
of course, required a significant
number of female guests. Trains
would make their way north from
New York and Boston, making
stops at Northampton, Springfield,
Holyoke, and Greenfield to pick
up female passengers on their way
to White River Junction, where
expectant Dartmouth men would
greet them with cheers of jubilee.
The scenario is singularly
detailed in the film Winter Carnival,
a fictional account of the 1939
celebration. The storyline follows
the somewhat corny romance
between a Dartmouth professor and
his old flame, a divorced duchess
who had held the crown of Winter
Carnival Queen in her younger
days. Among the amusing subplots
is a situation at the campus daily,
where the incoming editor decides
to change the paper to a tabloid
called the Dartmouth Graphic. Its
headline: “Smooth Babes Invade
Campus.” An entertaining look at
Winter Carnivals of old, the movie
shows not only students meeting
their dates at the train station, but
also footage of athletic events and
black-tie dances at fraternities.
Winter Carnival’s producer,
Walter Wanger ’15, enlisted Budd
Schulberg ’36 and author F. Scott
Fitzgerald to write the screenplay.
When the duo journeyed to
Hanover to prepare the story,

Fitzgerald drank so much at the
fraternities that he had to withdraw
from the project. Despite Fitzgerald’s
absence, the story perhaps shows
a bit of his influence; at the blacktie fraternity dance, the dejected
college professor drowns his
sorrows in double scotches. Winter
Carnival was named “one of the five
objectionable pictures of 1939” by
the Catholic Legion of Decency—a
distinction shared by Gone With
the Wind and Of Human Bondage;
it’s a must-see for every Dartmouth
student.
All Hail the Queen
One tradition that emerged
fairly early in Carnival history is the
crowning of the Winter Carnival
Queen. The tradition, possibly,
was inevitable, since a highlight of
Winter Carnival was the presence
of women on the normally all-male
campus. Said one former president
of the Dartmouth Outing Club,
“Dartmouth likes lots of company
over Carnival weekend, especially if
it is cute and wears skirts.”
The tradition of the Winter
Carnival Queen began in 1923,
when the young Mary Warren was
honored and adorned in garb from
the Russian Royal Court. The criteria
for Carnival Queen were changed
in 1928 so that the Queen would be
selected in line with the Carnival’s
outdoor theme. The editors of the
Daily Dartmouth encouraged the
choice of “the most charming girl in
winter sports costume for the
Queen of Snows.”
The competition for the title of
Winter Carnival Queen continued
for forty-nine years until, in 1973,
the Carnival Committee decided to
eliminate the tradition. Said George
Ritcheske, the committee chairman,
“Prevailing attitudes indicate that
contests which stress beauty as their
primary or only criterion no longer
have the widespread popularity they
once enjoyed.”
Changing Traditions
In 1939 a 37-foot snow statue of

Eleazar Wheelock “toasted visitors
with a fifteen gallon mug.” Visitors
to Dartmouth will appear again this
year for Winter Carnival, but they
won’t be regarded as the saviors of
the social scene, as they once were.
Dormitories, surely, are no longer
vacated to make room for trainloads
of female guests. Nor is the Hanover
Inn cleared out and turned into a
women’s residence. Today, because
of increased College oversight of
the fraternities and sororities, much
of Dartmouth’s past hospitality is
no longer possible, and visitors are
regularly turned away.
In 1998, Carnival turned ugly.
In the wake of President Wright’s
and the Trustees’ first salvo
against the Greek system with the
announcement of the Student Life
Initiative, the Co-ed, Fraternity,
and Sorority Council cancelled all
Carnival celebrations. “I haven’t
been invited to many fraternity
parties this weekend,” President
Wright announced at the opening
ceremonies, “but I still plan on
having a good time.” Students
booed Wright and the next day
held a rally at Psi Upsilon fraternity.
“President Wright’s announcement
on Wednesday embodies how not
to run a ollege,” said Psi U president
Teddy Rice. “This cannot be over.
And if it is, then I’m going to go
down fighting.”
Recent years’ debates over
Dartmouth’s community life have
found less proactive, and more
litigious, expression. Traditions
like the Psi U keg jump have been
shut down and their return seems
unlikely as the middling regulations
that govern student life grow stricter
every year. “There was nothing
like it almost anywhere,” Budd
Schulberg told the New York Times
two years ago. “There was a sexual
revolution going on. And for the
girls—as we called them then—it
was a big honor to be invited. There
was enormous excitement in the air.
It was romantic, really, in an oldfashioned sense. It’s still what you’d
call a party, but it’s nothing like it
was back then.”
Several years ago, Dartmouth
suffered the clumsiness of a Carnival
Committee that, after choosing
Calvin and Hobbes as the Carnival’s
mascots, insisted that an alternative
theme be chosen—despite the
comic’s author insistence use of
“Calvin and Hobbes” was okay. The
committee eventually settled upon
some hybrid that left the student
body scratching its collective head.
Then came the snow sculpture, both
sad and small in comparison to its
ancestors, and a fate that seems to be
upon us once more in 2009. Though
no one can be held responsible for
the lack of snow that has led to
smaller sculptures constructed out
of imported and purchased snow, it
nonetheless leaves a gaping hole in
the Dartmouth experience for those
current generations of Dartmouth
students who have yet to witness the
spectacular works that once marked
this holiday.
Though Carnival is not what it
once was—and what is these days?—
students this year will again reclaim
College traditions and hark back to
the days of old. Carnival remains a
celebration of the outdoors, of life,
and of Dartmouth.

10 Wednesday – February 7, 2018

The Dartmouth Review

FEATURES

F. Scott Fitzgerald Visits Hanover
> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Schulberg later described the
Carnival as “jumping off point
in time for the ski craze that was
eventually to sweep America from
Maine to California. But somehow in the 20’s, it had gotten all
mixed up with the election of a
Carnival Queen. And by the time
I was an undergraduate, I mean a
Dartmouth man, the Carnival had
developed into a hyped-up beauty
contest, winter fashion show and
fancy dress ball, complete with an
‘Outdoor Evening’ ski-and-ice extravaganza that would have made
Busby Berkeley green with envy.
“In 1929 the Carnival Queen
was a fledgling movie star, Florence Rice, daughter of the illustrious Grantland... In 1937, the
Dartmouth band led five thousand
to Occom Pond in a torchlight parade to cheer the coronation of a
gorgeous blonde with full red lips.
The Dartmouth ski team swooped
down from the hills with flaming
torches in tribute to their Queen
of the Snow. Champion skaters twirled on the ice in front of
her throne and sky rockets lit the
winter night. It had begun to look
more like a snowbound Hollywood super-colossal starring
Sonja Henie and a chorus of
Goldwyn Girls than the homespun college event Fred Harris
had fathered a quarter of a century
before. One could hardly blame a
movie tycoon-alumnus like Walter
Wanger for wanting to bring it to
the screen.
“Wanger was a very dapper
man; he prided himself on being
dapper in a Hollywood setting
among gauche Holly-wood producers. Walter was Ivy League,
and he played that role of the Ivy
League producer. He had the right
threads on for the Ivy League: he
was Brooks Brothers. And he had
books—real books!—in the bookcase behind him. The only thing
that bothered me—well, a number
of things bothered me about Walter—but the only detail that bothered me was that he had a large
photo of Mussolini framed there
on the wall, inscribed ‘To Walter,
with the best wishes of his friend,
Benito.’ By the end of the year that
disappeared into the bathroom.”
Wanger told Schulberg that the
script he’d written solo was “lousy,”
(“I didn’t see War and Peace in
Winter Carnival,” quipped Schulberg), and that he would need to
bring in another writer. Schulberg
said later that no matter how famous or accomplished a writer was
in those days, he could be hired for
a few days before being summarily fired. So he felt lucky merely to
have hung on to the job and asked
who his collaborator would be.
“It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald,” said
Wanger.
“I looked at him; I honestly
Mr. Desai is a member of the
Class of 2008 and a former Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth
Review.

thought he was pulling my leg.”
Schulberg had seen Fitzgerald
some years back downtown at
the Biltmore Theatre as he came
out of a play with Dorothy Parker and looking “ghostly white and
frail and pail.” But that was some
years back, and when Wanger said,
‘F. Scott Fitzgerald,’ I said, ‘Scott
Fitzgerald—isn’t he dead?’ And
Wanger made some crack like,
‘Well, I doubt that your script is
that bad.’ He perhaps said, ‘Maybe
bored him to death,’ or something
like that. But Wanger said, ‘No, he’s
in the next room, and he’s reading
your script now.’” Schulberg went
to meet him.
“My God, he’s so old,” he thought
then. “His complexion,” he said
later, “was manuscript white and,
though there was still a light brown
tint to his hair, the first impression
he made on me was of a ghost—
the ghost of the Great Novelist Past
who had sprung to early fame with
This Side of Paradise, capped his
early promise at age 29 with what
many critics hailed as the great
American novel, The Great Gatsby,
and then had taken nine years to
write and publish the book most
of the same critics condemned
as ‘disappointing,’ Tender is the
Night.”
Fitzgerald finished reading the
forty-eight-odd pages of the “Winter Carnival” script and said, “Well,
it’s not very good,” to which Schulberg replied, “Oh, I know, I know,
I know it’s not good.” They went to
lunch at the Brown Derby.
Schulberg and Fitzgerald soon
discovered that they knew “everybody in common; it was a small
town... We talked about so many
writers. We talked about the dilemma of the Eastern writer coming West and writing movies for
a living, always with the dream of
that one more chance, one more
chance to go back and write that
novel, write that play that wouldre-establish him—mostly him, a
few hers—once again.” Schulberg
told him how much he admired
Gatsby, and how much it meant to
him, along with the short stories
and Tender is the Night.
“I’m really amazed that you
know anything about me,” said
Fitzgerald,
“I’ve had the feeling that nobody in your generation would
read me anymore. “I have a lot of
friends that do.” (“That was only
partly true,” he said later, “Most of
my radical, communist-oriented
peers looked on him as a relic.”)
“Last year my royalties were $13,”
said Fitzgerald.
They discussed politics, literature, and gossip. “Scott was tuned
into everything we talked about—
everything except “Winter Carnival.” Everything. We went through
those things, I think, all afternoon.
We decided to meet the next day at
the studio at ten, and we did but we
got talking about everything but
“Winter Carnival”... and we tried
we really tried. But “Winter Carnival” was the kind of movie that is
very hard to get your mind on, es-

pecially when you have the excitement of so many other things that
are really more interesting.”
It was, in other words, a pleasant
time, though they were not doing
the work for which they were being
paid. “After about four or five days,
it reminded me of sitting around a
campus dormitory room in one of
those bull sessions, talking about
all the things we both shared and
enjoyed.” An additional danger
loomed: though they drew salaries,
they had not signed contracts and
could be fired at any time.
After a week, Wanger called
them into his office to check on
their progress. Having done hardly
any work, they nevertheless man-

cracked the second bottle of champagne. We went on merrily talking
and drinking.
Every once in a while we would
say, ‘You know, by the time we
get to Manhattan we’d better have
some kind of a line on this Winter
Carnival.’ And we tried all kinds of
things; we really did try. “In Manhattan, they stayed at the Warwick
Hotel, where they worked for a bit
on the story, to no real end. “Scott,”
he said, “You’ve written a hundred
short stories, and I’ve written a
few: I mean between the two of us
we should be able to knock out a
damn outline for this story.”
“Yes, we will, we will. Don’t
worry, pal. We will, we will,” said

Though Schulberg had told himself he would
keep an eye on Fitzgerald’s drinking, the man
had nevertheless managed to procure a pint
of gin, which he kept in his overcoat pocket.
aged not to let on that they had
been ignoring the script. Wanger
said that they’d better create a central storyline soon, since the entire
crew was traveling to Hanover to
shoot “backgrounds.” (“In those
days, they would shoot the backgrounds based on what the scenes
were and then in the studio have
the actors behaving as if they were
at the ski-lift, on the porch of the
Inn, and so forth.”)
As to whether they should accompany the crew, Fitzgerald was
resistant. “Well, Walter, I hadn’t
planned to go to Dartmouth.
I’ve seen enough college parties,
I think, to write a college movie
without having to go to the Winter Carnival.” His resistance was
perhaps more understandable if
you understand that flying in those
days required a goodly chunk of
time. “People today don’t realize
what flying was. It was just one step
away from the Santa Fe Chief. You
got on, and you stopped for refueling several times, and it took about
sixteen hours.”
To stay employed, Fitzgerald
gave in. “While I felt sorry for
Scott, I have to admit that I was
looking for-ward to going back to
Dartmouth with Scott Fitzgerald.”
Schulberg regarded his father, the
head of Para-mount, as one of the
more literary producers in town,
and this trait made him proud that
his son was working with such a
figure as Fitzgerald. Therefore, the
elder Schulberg brought them two
bottles of champagne for the trip.
“As we got on the plane, we were
still talking,” Schulberg recalled,
“We were talking about Edmund
Wilson, we were talking about
communism, we were talking
about the people we knew in common, like Upton Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens. All of this was going
on and on. And it would have been
great fun if we didn’t have this
enormous monkey—more like
a gorilla—of “Winter Carnival”
on our backs. We got to sipping
champagne through the next hour
or so; it was very congenial. It was
really fun, I thought, and then we

Fitzgerald. A few college friends
called Schulberg, and it turned out
they were staying only a few blocks
away. “So I told Scott that I would
go and see them; I’d be back in
one hour. That was one of my mistakes.” When he returned to the
room, he found an unpunctuated
note that read, from Schulberg’s
memory, “Pal you shouldn’t have
left me pal because I got lonely
pal and I went down to the bar
pal and I came up and looked for
you pal and now I’m back down at
the bar and I’ll be waiting for you
pal.” Schulberg found Fitzgerald in
a hotel bar a few blocks away and
saw that he was in bad shape, not
having eaten anything. Nevertheless, they continued to drink and
work on the script back in their
room in preparation for the nine
a.m. meeting with Wanger at the
Waldorf Astoria in the morning.
Despite the drink, the lack of sleep,
and the fact that they had no story,
they successfully evaded Wanger’s
detection and were encouraged
to keep working. As they got up,
Wanger asked in passing, “Oh, by
the way, did you meet anybody
on the plane?” Schulberg mentioned that they had seen Sheilah
Graham, a movie columnist. “And
Walter’s face darkened, and he
looked at Scott and said, ‘Scott, you
son of a bitch.’”
It turned out that Fitzgerald had
secretly arranged to have his girlfriend accompany him on the trip,
though it might be more correct to
say that she was the one who insisted on it. Fitzgerald, in addition
to his alcoholism, simply had very
poor health. But, in Schulberg’s
presence, Fitzgerald and Graham
pretended to have met by chance
on the plane. Schulberg apologized to Fitzgerald for mentioning
it in the Waldorf. “Well, Budd, it’s
my fault. I should have told you.”
Despite this delay, they managed
to make the Carnival Special, the
train conveying crowds of females
to Dartmouth for the weekend.
“They were really like a thousand Scott Fitzgerald heroines,
they were...The entire train given

over to Winter Carnival.” In 1974,
Schulberg revisited Dartmouth
and wrote an open letter to Fitzgerald, reminiscing about their
little bender. The Carnival Special
was apparently the most noticeable
absence from the1970s version.
“Can you hear me right, Scott?
No more Carnival Special! No
more train loads of breathless
dates, doll-faced blondes and
saucy brunettes, the prettiest and
flashiest from Vassar, Wellesley,
and Smith. Plus the hometown
knockouts in form-fitting ski suits,
dressed to their sparkling white
teeth for what we used to call ‘The
Mardi Gras of the North.’ Of course
there were some plain faces among
them, homespun true loves, as befits any female invasion.”
Though Schulberg had told
himself he would keep an eye on
Fitzgerald’s drinking, the man had
nevertheless managed to procure
a pint of gin, which he kept in his
overcoat pocket. “One thing that
[writers are] able to do, they are
like magicians in their ability to
hide and then suddenly produce
bottles.” Wanger took Schulberg
aside and asked him if Fitzgerald
had been drinking, to which he answered no, in a sort of writers’ solidarity against producers. “Another
thing I should mention in passing
is that Scott may have looked as if
he was falling down drunk but his
mind never stopped,” Schulberg
recalled.
When they arrived, the extremely enthusiastic second unit
director, Otto Lovering, better
known as Lovey, met them on the
platform, bright and eager. “Just
tell use where to go, boys, “he said
to them, “We’re ready, we got the
crew... we’re ready to go!” They
stalled and asked to go to the Hanover Inn, where they supposed
they might think up a story within
an hour or so.
When they got to the Hanover
Inn, the entire film crew was already there, “twenty people—
more, two dozen—everybody had
a room at the Inn.” Sir, we don’t
seem to have a reservation for
you,” said the desk clerk to Fitzgerald, and as a result Schulberg and
Fitzgerald ended up in the attic of
the Inn. “It was not really a room
meant for people to live in,” remembered Schulberg, “It was sort
of an auxiliary room where things
were stored.” The room contained
a single two-level wire bed, a table,
and no chair. “Gee, I’m sorry, Scott,
but its hard to believe they’ve forgotten to get a room for us,” said
Schulberg.
When they got to the Hanover
Inn, the entire film crew was already there, “twenty people—
more, two dozen—everybody had
a room at the Inn.” Sir, we don’t
seem to have a reservation for
you,” said the desk clerk to Fitzgerald, and as a result Schulberg and
Fitzgerald ended up in the attic of
the Inn. “It was not really a room
meant for people to live in,” remembered Schulberg, “It was sort
of an auxiliary room where things

The Dartmouth Review

Wednesday – February 7, 2018

9

FEATURES

A Winter Carnival Epic
were stored.” The room contained
a single two-level wire bed, a table,
and no chair. “Gee, I’m sorry, Scott,
but its hard to believe they’ve forgotten to get a room for us,” said
Schulberg.
“Well,” Fitzgerald quipped, “I
guess that really does say something about where the film writer
stands in the Hollywood society.”
(“And he seemed to see it completely in symbols,” Schulberg
remembered later.)They stayed
in their attic room the entire day,
drinking and trying to write. “Scott
stretched out on his back in the
lower [bunk], and I in the upper,
according to our rank, and we tried
to ad-lib a story…But the prospect
of still another college musical was
hardly inspiring, and soon we were
comparing the Princeton of his
generation with the Dartmouth of
mine.”
“Well, maybe this is good,”
thought Schulberg, “The booze
will sort of run out. We’re up in
the attic; there’s no phone; there’s
nothing. And maybe if Scott takes
a nap, and we take a deep breath,
we’ll just start all over again.”
Periodically, Lovey popped his
eager-beaver headinto the room.
“Where do we go? What’s the first
set-up?” Schulberg and Fitzgerald
simply pulled locations out of thin
air with no relation to any extant
plot. They told him on a whim to
shoot at the Outing Club: “Well,
we have a scene of the two of them
as they come down the steps and
they look at the frozen pond, and
we’ll play that scene there.” They
didn’t, in fact, have a scene. Lovey
enthusiastically dispatched these
fool’s errands: ‘”Great, you’ve done
it awfully well.”
And just when it seemed that
they’d drunk all the alcohol, the
“ruddy-faced, ex-athlete “Professor Red Merrill came into their
attic chamber, bearing a bottle of
whiskey. Schulberg had been introduced to Fitzgerald’s work in
Merrill’s class “Sociology and the
American Novel,” and Merrill was
a rare Fitzgerald fan. The three of
them proceeded to kill this bottle
in a few hours while discussing
literature. After Merrill left, Lovey
ducked in and asked for an-other
set-up, which he received. Fitzgerald was then sup- posed to attend a
reception with the dean (there was
at that time only one dean, according to Schulberg) and several other
literature-minded faculty members. The idea was that Wanger
would present him and Fitzgerald would describe the plot of the
film they were shooting. “It was a
disaster since it was pretty obvious that not only was Scott drunk,
but when I tried to fill in for him,
anyone could see that we had no
story.”
“One Professor Macdonald (I
remember him well; he was a very
dapper man, very well-dressed,
very feisty) made me feel bad because I thought he was enjoying
Scott’s appearance and Scott’s defeat. He said, ‘He’s really a total
wreck, isn’t he? He’s a total wreck.’

But he didn’t say it in a nice way to
me. At the same time Scott looked
as if he was absolutely non compus,
but his mind was going fast and
well, and he made observations
about these people that were much
sharper, I think, than anything that
Professor MacDonald or anybody
else could say. “Then Schulberg
realized why Wanger had insisted
so strongly on Fitzgerald’s coming
to Dartmouth. He had hoped that
the college might confer Wanger
an honorary degree if he paraded
around a writer. “He thought that
showing off Scott Fitzgerald, even
a faded Scott Fitzgerald, would
help him along that road. And
now he’d been embarrassed and, in
a way, humiliated.”
In The Daily Dartmouth’s February 11, 1939 issue, John D.
Hess wrote up an interview with
Wanger and Fitzgerald: “The public personality of Walter Wanger
‘15 is a disturbing blend of abruptness and charm. At this particular
interview, he sat quietly in a chair
exuding power and authority in
easy breaths, seemingly indifferent
to anything I said, but quickly, suddenly, sharply catching a phrase,
questioning it, commenting upon
it, grinding it into me, smiling,
and then apparently forgetting all
about me again. “In a chair directly
across from Mr. Wanger was Mr. F.
Scott Fitzgerald, who looked and
talked as if he had long since become tired of being known as the
spokes-man of that unfortunate
lost generation of the 1920’s.Mr.
Fitzgerald is working on the script
of Mr. Wanger’s picture, ‘Winter
Carnival.’”
We now know, of course, that
Fitzgerald was not tired, but three
sheets to the wind. Having more
or less survived the faculty ordeal,
the pair proceeded back to the Inn,
where Schulberg encouraged Fitzgerald to take an invigorating nap.

the room. I said, ‘O.K., Scott, here
we are,’ and he realized what I was
doing and got very mad at me.
We had sort of a tussle and we fell
down in the snow, kind of rolled in
the snow.” After this was resolved,
they decided to visit a coffee shop.
“[At the coffee shop] it was humorous in a way because there were all
those kids enjoying Winter Carnival, and everybody was so up, and
we were so bedraggled, so down,
worried, in despair.” Suddenly,
Fitzgerald went into his element,
and told “this marvelous detailed,
romantic story of a girl in an open
touring car (he described how she
was dressed). Over the top of the
hill is this skier coming down, and
she stops theca and looks at him.
Scott described it immaculately
well.”
Having finished the coffee, they
proceeded back to the Hanover
Inn, on whose steps loomed—“as
in a bad movie—or maybe in the
movie we were trying to write” —
none other than Walter Wanger,
dressed in a white tie and top hat
“like Fred Astaire... He was not
a tall man, but standing a step or
two above us and with a top hat, he
really looked like a Hollywood god
staring down at us.”
“I don’t know what the next
train out of here is,” Wanger intoned, “but you two are going to
be on it.”
“They put us on the train about
one o’clock in the morning with no
luggage,” Schulberg remembers,”
They just threw us on the train.” At
dawn they pulled into New York,
and Schulberg with the porter had
to rouse Fitzgerald and drag him
into a cab. They returned to the
Warwick they had just left, and apparently experiencing a motif, were
greeted with the news that there
was no room. Perhaps, Schulberg
thought later, their appearance and
lack of luggage dissuaded the staff.

We now know, of course, that Fitzgerald was
not tired, but three sheets to the wind. Having
more or less survived the faculty ordeal,
the pair proceeded back to the Inn, where
Schulberg encouraged Fitzgerald to take an
invigorating nap.
He lay down on the bottom bunk,
and Schulberg, believing Fitzgerald asleep, snuck off to visit some
fraternity chums. Sitting at the
fraternity bar not long after this
escape, Schulberg felt a tap on his
shoulder. It was Fitzgerald. “I don’t
know how he got there or found
me, but he did. And he looked so
totally out of place. He had on his
fedora and his overcoat. He was
not in any way prepared either in
his clothing or his mind for this
Winter Carnival weekend.” Supporting him by the arm, Schulberg
walked Fitzgerald out of the house
and down Wheelock Street. He
seemed suddenly to regain his energy and suggested having a drink
at Psi U. “And when we got to the
Inn... I tried to fool Scott.
I was trying to get him back in

“Somehow the days had run together and we hadn’t changed. We
both looked like what you look like
when you haven’t done some of the
things that one needs to do to keep
yourself together.”
“Have you got a reservation?”
the desk staff asked. “Well, we just
left,” they responded, although,
Schulberg recalled, “It seemed
like a year, an eternity... As I look
back we had no luggage, and the
two of us looked like God knows
what. I don’t think we’d changed
our clothes from the time we’d left
Hollywood. I’m sure we’d hardly gone to bed, maybe an hour or
so, half-dressed, in the Warwick.”
Several unreceptive hotels later,
Fitzgerald said, “Budd, take me to
the Doctors’ Hospital. They’ll take
me in there at the Doctors’ Hospi-

tal.” This worked, and a week later Sheila Graham took Fitzgerald
back west.
He was of course Fred. Schulberg was fired and re-hired. “After
Winter Carnival,” he was in major
trouble,” remembers Schulberg,
“You know what a small town it is.
Everybody knows everybody else’s
business, and Scott was extremely damaged.” Yet, touchingly for
Schulberg, Fitzgerald continued
to send him notes about the film.
“He had great dreams about Hollywood,” Schulberg said, “It was not
just the money. Most of the writers
I knew— Faulkner and the others—just wanted to get the money
and get out. Scott was different.
He believed in the movies…. He
went to films all the time and he
kept a card file of the plots. He’d
go back and write out the plot of
every film he saw. “Still, the picture itself couldn’t have worked,
he said, “For by the end of the 30’s,
when we haunted the Carnival, it
had become a show in itself. And
backstage stories are notoriously
resistant to quality.”
Schulberg and Fitzgerald remained good friends afterwards,
continuing to discuss what they’d
always wished to discuss without the burden of Wanger or his
film. Schulberg remained struck
by Fitzgerald’s irrepressible, almost boyish enthusiasm for ideas.
“One evening, in West Los Angeles,” Schulberg wrote, “I was
dashing off, late for a dinner party, when Scott burst in. ‘I’ve just
been rereading Spengler’s Decline
of the West.’ That was for openers
from the playboy of the western
world. How did he maintain this
incredible sophomoric enthusiasm that all the agonies could not
down? I told him I just didn’t have
time to go into Spengler now. I
was notoriously late and had to
run. Scott accepted this with his
usual Minneapolis-cum-Princeton-cum-Southern good manners.
‘All right. But we have to talk
about it. In the light of what Hitler is doing in Europe. Spengler
saw it coming. I could feel it. But
did nothing about it. Typical—of
the decline of the west.’ “Maybe it
was to make up for the years frittered away at Princeton, and in the
playgrounds of the rich, but, drunk
or sober (and except for the Dartmouth trip and one other occasion, I only saw him sober),he never stopped learning, never stopped
inquiring.” Schulberg remembers
the day he saw Fitzgerald for the
last time. “I remember very well it
was on the first day of December in
1940, and I was going East; I’d been
working on my first novel), I went
to say goodbye to Scott, and he was
in bed. He lived in a sort of simple, fairly plain apartment right in
pretty much the heart of old Hollywood off of Sunset Boulevard right
around the corner from Schwab’s
Drugstore, which was the hangout
for everyone in the neighborhood.
Scott had this desk built for him
to rest around him in the bed, as
he was pretty frail and feeling weak

and at the same time found he could
write in bed for two-three hours
every day.” He brought a copy of
Tender is the Night, which he had
Fitzgerald inscribe to his daughter Vicky. The inscription read,
“Whose illustrious father pulled
me out of snowdrifts and away
from avalanches.” (Dartmouth has
this inscribed copy in its special
collections.)Schulberg asked how
his novel, which turned out to be
The Last Tycoon, was progressing.
Though Schulberg didn’t know
the novel’s exact subject matter, he
guessed it was Hollywood since
Fitzgerald had barraged him with
questions about the film industry,
and what it had been like growing
up around it. Later, Schulberg was
mildly disappointed to read in the
first pages of The Last Tycoon an
insight that he had given Fitzgerald during one off these interviews.
It was the idea that Hollywood was
an industry town like any other,
except that it made movies instead
of tires or steel.
Yet, it did not sting too badly:
“I’ve known writers (I was raised
with them), and I’ve known them
from one end of my life to the
other. And he was one of the gentlest, kindest, most sympathetic
and generous writers I’ve ever
met. At the same time, of course,
he couldn’t stop lifting something
you said because that’s the profession he was in.” In late December
1940, Schulberg had a drink with a
Dartmouth professor, Herb West,
at the Hanover Inn. West “suddenly but terribly casually looked
up from his glass and said, ‘Isn’t it
too bad about Scott Fitzgerald?’”
This was the first that Schulberg
had heard of Fitzgerald’s death of
a heart attack in Sheila Graham’s
apartment. The obituaries portrayed Fitzgerald as a mere mascot
of the Jazz Age, a man unfit for the
age of political commitment. Disgusted, Schulberg, John O’Hara,
and Edmund Wilson, inter alia,
approached The New Republic in
1941 with the idea of a Fitzgerald
memorial issue, which ran.
Wanger went on to lead the
Association of Alumni and the
Motion Picture Academy, while
continuing to produce movies.
Schulberg testified voluntarily
before the House Un-American
Activities Committee, explaining
that he broke with communism
when they tried to interfere with
his literary work. He won the
Academy Award for the screenplay for “On the Waterfront” several years later. In 1951, Wanger
shot his actress wife’s agent in the
groin with a .38 pistol. “I shot him
because he broke up my home,”
he told the police. The incident
was well-covered in the papers.
He served four months in prison.
Schulberg’s The Disenchanted,
published in 1950, was widely
seen as a roman-à-clef about Fitzgerald and became a bestseller. It
renewed interest in Fitzgerald and
his novels, which were reprinted.
Today, his critical reputation is
unassailable..

12 Wednesday – February 7, 2018

The Dartmouth Review

THE LAST WORD
GORDON HAFF’S

COMPILED BY DANIEL M. BRING

“For the present you can just call me the Kingfish.”
–Huey P. Long Jr.
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
–B.J. Vorster
“I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve
it, and to live or die for it.”
–Casimir Pulaski
“Today the name of America has a magic meaning for the
most distant communities of the world.”
–Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is
dearness only that gives everything its value.”
–Thomas Paine
“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional
takes a little longer.”
–Henry Kissinger
“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine
that age brings wisdom.”
–H.L. Mencken

“I have not yet begun to fight.”
“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am
willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and
provide for it.”
–Patrick Henry
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is
the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and
the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
–President Theodore Roosevelt
“Democracy without morality is impossible.”

“War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no
rules.”
–Ross Perot
“Free enterprise, individual opportunity, limited government. They made America great; only they can keep
America strong.”
–Reince Priebus
“Thr truth of the matter is that you always know the right
thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”
–Norman Schwarzkopf
“The wind of change is blowing through the continent.
Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”
–Harold Macmillan

Here’s the deal— you remember how to make certain drinks with different mnemonic devices. Want to make a “Sex on the Beach”? Who has sex on the beach— very crazy old people.
V-C-O-P— vodka, cranberry, OJ, peach schnapps. Someone orders an Alabama Slammer?
All Southerners Sip OJ. Amaretto, SoCo, Sloe Gin, and OJ— don’t forget the flag on the top.
The Harvey Wallbanger-stein— it’s disgusting. No idea why anyone would ever drink it. But
here’s how you remember it: it’s a glorified screwdriver with Galliano in it.
Ugh, Galliano. If it’s in a drink, the word “wall” will be somewhere in the title because the
bottle’s so unnecessarily big, and the liqueur is so disgusting, that everyone just shoves it in the
back of the bar against the wall and hopes that they never need to touch it. It’s supposed to
taste like a subtle anise and vanilla, but if you put any of it into any drink ever it’ll overpower
the rest of the ingredients. When it’s floated right on top, the entire drink just tastes like the
top-half of a bottom-class stripper.
When a guy walks in and orders a Harvey Wallbanger-stein, I feel sorry for him and me.
God knows he’s a contemptibly obnoxious person who’s incapable of experiencing any genuine emotion besides undeserved love for himself. And he’s not going to tip worth a damn.
To make a Harvey Wallbanger-stein, shove some ice in a beer stein, pour the vodka on the
bottom, fill to almost the top with OJ, and float the galliano right on top.
And yeah. This should really be served on the rocks in a highball. But the guy ordering this
wants to feel big and special. So he wants it a big, ornate beer stein. Doesn’t bother me— I’m
still going to do the world some good and short-change him on the liquor.

— Scotch M. Cara

–John Paul Jones

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the
inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
–H.P. Lovecraft
“We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this
became a war of attrition. We were winning.”
–William Westmoreland
“As polarized as we have been, we Americans are locked
in a cultural war for the soul of our country.”
–Patrick Buchanan
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who
can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a
solution everybody can understand.”
–Colin Powell
“A government big enough to give you everything you
want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
–President Gerald Ford
“I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my
actions.”
–Enoch Powell
“The time has come to stop telling the American people
only what they want them to hear, and start talking
frankly about the sacrifices we must all make.”
–John B. Anderson